Innholdsfortegnelse for August - September 2017 i Handguns

Brass Sorting I have been reloading for more than four decades and started serious handgun competition in 1974 as a rookie police officer competing in local, state and regional competitions. New brass was generally not available, and when it was, it was just not affordable on our meager salaries. Like thousands of other law enforcement officers, we scrounged discarded brass from the ranges we shot on, but with one very important difference from what Mr. Sweeney described in “Brass Tacks” (April/May). As savvy reloaders, we sorted all our used brass by manufacturer before reloading it—and by lots, if possible. I was actually astounded that he loaded mixed manufacturers of brass and then proceeded to compare it against new, consistent, single-manufacture Starline brass—from the same lot, no less! Using sorted, same-brand,…

MORE THAN EVER, THE DEFENSIVE handgunner has an abundance of targets to train with. Although the traditional bullseye-style target is beneficial in developing marksmanship fundamentals, it falls flat when it comes to preparing a shooter for a gunfight. If your goal is to develop life-saving skills with your handgun, you should incorporate other types of targets. Bullseye targets are fun to shoot and provide essential feedback to the new shooter. The bullseye offers a distinct aiming point. If you hit it, bingo! If you miss, this type of target makes it easy to diagnose shoot- ing errors. Many bullseye targets contain scoring rings, enabling the shooter to grade his or her performance. When a shot timer is added to the mix, the shooter can tell whether speed and accuracy are…

ASIDE FROM THE NO. 1 RIFLE, I THINK the Blackhawk single-action revolver is Bill Ruger’s finest gun-design achievement. I have an Old Model Blackhawk built in 1970 and a New Model Super Blackhawk made in ’78, and I love shooting them. First introduced in 1955 as a .357 Magnum, the Blackhawk has been chambered to a wide array of cartridges and has undergone several design changes over the years—most notably the 1973 introduction of the New Model guns. These have a transfer bar that prevents the frame-mounted firing pin from striking a primer unless the trigger is pulled. This safety feature allows New Model Blackhawks to be carried safely with a full six rounds in the cylinder. New Model guns also have a loading gate that interlocks with the cylinder…

RUGER SR1911 TARGET The newest SR1911 is a full-size gun sporting Bomar-style sights, with a serrated-face fully adjustable rear and blade front. It has a Series 70 trigger system—the designers employing a titanium firing pin and heavier firing pin spring—for a crisp trigger pull. The satin-finished stainless steel is set off with black controls, including an extended ambidextrous thumb safety, oversize mag release and memory bump grip safety. Grips are G10. The ejection port is lowered and flared, and the barrel and bushing are machined from the same piece of bar stock. { $1,019, RUGER.COM } MEC-GAR 10-ROUND WITNESS MAGS Having lived in California for many years, I feel the pain of those who live in restrictive states. Mec-Gar does, too, and it’s now offering Large Frame Witness magazines for…

Change comes at us fast these days, and one of the latest comes from Kimber. The company makes revolvers now. And it doesn’t make just any revolvers but rather all-stainless six-shot double-action snubbies—serious carry guns for those who realize revolvers are cool and eminently useful carry guns. (DUO\›ODVW›\HDU›,›KDG›DQ›RSSRUWXQLW\›WR›WHVW›ÀUH›D›SUH- production K6s, and it was a lot of fun. This gun is now in regular production and available in four models: First Edition, LG, DCR and Stainless. I received the DCR (Deluxe Carry Revolver) for testing. The basic K6s is a double-action-only, six-shot snubbie. The internal hammer is completely enclosed, so there is no thumb-cocking option. That’s not a problem, as the Kimber action is one of the easiest to stage factory actions I’ve ever felt. Staging is where you use your…

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THE FIRST TIME I PICKED UP A DAN Wesson revolver, I looked at it and put it back down. To a man used to more traditional revolvers, I thought the bulbous barrel nut hanging off the muzzle was just plain ugly—although I admitted the concept was interesting: one gun that used multiple barrels in various lengths. But in time the barrel nut became an integral part of the barrel shroud, and the system grew on me. The concept itself came from Daniel B. Wesson, great-grandson of Smith & Wesson co-founder D.B. Wesson. Daniel started the Dan Wesson Arms Company because he knew he could make something not only different from what was on the market then, but make it better. Right from the start frames were made to magnum specifications.…

The new law applies to the pretrial stage only if the defendant files a motion to dismiss based on self-defense. TODAY, 27 STATES HAVE STAND YOUR Ground laws, and additional states have adopted Stand Your Ground-like doctrines through judicial interpretation. These laws remove the duty to retreat before using force, including deadly force, in self-defense. And a recently passed Florida law increases the protections afforded to people who use deadly force in self-defense. What does Stand Your Ground really mean? The concept is simple: You may stand your ground and meet force with force, and it is permissible to use or threaten force against an assailant even if you have an easy way to retreat. Under Stand Your Ground, there is no requirement to give any warning that you are…

PEARL HART WAS YOUR AVERAGE ARI- zona citizen—who just happened to like to hold up stagecoaches. She was born Pearl Taylor, c. 1871, and by the time she was in her 20s, she’d developed a taste for hard liquor, rough cigars and morphine. “I was only 22 years old. I was good-looking, desperate, discouraged and ready for anything that might come. I do not care to dwell on this period of my life. It is sufficient to say that I went from one city to another until sometime later I arrived in Phoenix, Arizona.” She was working as a cook in a boarding house in the mining town of Mammoth, southeast of Phoenix, when she received word her mother was seriously ill. She and her beau at the time decided…

IT WASN’T SO LONG AGO THAT SIGHTS ON a defensive handgun were considered, well, if not quite irrelevant, unimportant. Superfluous. After all, if you needed to defend yourself, the bad guy had to be within shouting distance, probably within spitting distance. All you needed to do was point the gun and you’d hit him. While there are still a few flat- Earthers out there who say nobody ever aims in a real shooting, you can find story after story of cops and private citizens seeing their sights during gunfights. So it only makes sense to put the “best” sights on your handgun. As defensive handgunning techniques have been refined and improved, so have handgun sights, and currently the type of sights occupying the top rung of the defensive/tactical ladder are…

We train with our handguns for personal protection at close range. The history of violent incidents tells the story that these are most often arm’s length to across-the-street events. With little to no warning of the threat, we have to be ready to respond, and the handgun will likely be the means to do so. But what if you face a situation where you have to stop a threat well beyond the everyday training scenario? Can you make the long shot, just in case? What does it take, and how do you train for it? My reading education on extended-distance pistol work started with gun writer Elmer Keith and his classic book, Sixguns. He dedicated a chapter to long-distance handgun shooting and described the technique that allowed him to make…